Snow

[Train wasp]

Winter time is just around the corner now and reading the Saturday news papers yesterday we could be in for a big freeze within the next few weeks depending on which area of the country you are in. Does anyone know if Network Railway are ready for his big freeze which could shut down parts of the network?

Cheers

 

[Ploughman]

What do you reckon the true answer will be?

 

[ainsworth74]

Assuming they've made the same level of preparation that they did last year (and then didn't need, perhaps somewhat annoyingly for them) I think we'll do fine on the whole. I would imagine there will be a few days here and there were the delays stack up but nothing as catastrophic as we've had in the recent past.

 

[jopsuk]

top tip: the forecasters certain newspapers go to for their "WE'RE DOOMED" headline long range forecasts are utterly, utterly rubbish. Truly rubbish.

That's not to say we'll have very cold winter, but the far more reliable (no really) Met Office are not saying anything like this yet- here's what they have to say

 

[W230]

top tip: the forecasters certain newspapers go to for their "WE'RE DOOMED" headline long range forecasts are utterly, utterly rubbish. Truly rubbish.

Exactly. These same newspapers print the same drivel every single year.

Barbeque summer 2013 anyone?

 

[Oswyntail]

The conspiracy theorists among us might suspect that this is orchestrated by the climate-change deniers (alias multi-nationals) who wish to convince us that global warming is not occurring by the simple proof that we are having colder winters, so they have no need to cut emissions. There is so much utter tosh in those sort of statements! The Met office blog quoted above is about as sensible as I have ever seen.

 

[ainsworth74]

They do sound rather ticked off at the Daily Express however

 

[ushawk]

There was only disruption when all the snow fell heavily at once. When it stopped services generally ran normally, lessons were learnt from 2010

 

[michael769]

Winter time is just around the corner now and reading the Saturday news papers yesterday we could be in for a big freeze within the next few weeks depending on which area of the country you are in. Does anyone know if Network Railway are ready for his big freeze which could shut down parts of the network?

Cheers

The newspaper reports of "a big freeze" are overblown and without foundation. You may recall similar claims from the same papers last year - only to experience the warmest November and December in 45 years. The driest in 150 years.

With currently available computing technology we can only forecast reliably 5 days into the future, and can sometimes get some general large scale trends out to 7-14 days. Any forecast that purports to forcast the weather beyong that sould be treated with some caution.

 

[Eagle]

They do sound rather ticked off at the Daily Express however

No more than usual, though.

 

[crewmeal]

Well the world is supposed to finish on 21/12 so there shouldn't be any worries for TOCs!

 

[michael769]

Well the world is supposed to finish on 21/12 so there shouldn't be any worries for TOCs!

What about the train running stats? 0% running will not be good for their targets!

 

[boing_uk]

Reading that blog I get the impression that...

The Express: "Winters coming, its going to get cold".

The Met Office:

 

[Howardh]

Up here in Lancashire the question "what's winter going to be like?" is usually followed by the answer "summer".

 

[Ploughman]

Well I have got my Snowplough.
Have you got yours?

 

[Bald Rick]

To be fair the Express was a couple of weeks later with its winter headline this year.

Meanwhile, we started switching on the conductor rail heating this morning.

The DB drivers' work to rule may have an impact on anti-icing trains though; it's been a miracle that almost all of the Autumn circuits have been covered.

 

[jopsuk]

I'm checking with people that know better, but I think "Exacta Weather" (source of the Express idiocy) may be run by a climate-change denying mate of Boris Johnson.

Edit: ah, wait, no, that's "Weather Action" run by Piers Corbyn, who thinks it is all sunspots (despite the correlation being terrible), but there do seem to be connections.

 

[michael769]

This is from Scotrail on the subject:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKtOs4Jk-8E&feature=plcp